The STEM club from Holy Cross School in Chorley and the North West Local Centre of the Royal Meteorological Society collaborated on a project to launch a balloon into the atmosphere. The balloon was carrying a camera, a GPS transmitter and a radiosonde, an instrument which transmits measurements by radio waves back...

A Catalyst article following the journey of the space probes Huygens and Cassini, sent to explore Titan, a moon of Saturn. After a seven year journey Huygens was set to fall through the atmosphere transmitting data back to Earth via Cassini so more can be learnt about this distant moon. The article describes the...

A Catalyst article about designing, building and testing a spacecraft. There are thousands of man-made satellites orbiting the Earth. Some are only a few hundred kilometres above the Earth and complete one orbit roughly every 90 minutes. Geostationary satellites are located around 40 000 kilometres from the surface...

The Big Picture on pages 10-11 of this issue of Catalyst shows scientists in Antarctica launching a balloon which will travel up through the atmosphere to a height of 34 km above the Earth’s surface. This balloon is part of NASA’s BARREL mission, probing the radiation belts which surround the Earth.

A Catalyst article about microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet and X-rays which are all electromagnetic waves. The article looks at their different uses and why some are used to create medical images and others to treat disease. The article also explores how the electromagnetic spectrum is used by medical physicists to...

A Catalyst article about the idea of life on Mars. Scientists involved with the Mars Express mission aim to find out more and will try to establish if there ever has been life on Mars. The article looks at the miniature devices that they will employ on the mission.

A Catalyst article about Earth’s biodiversity much of which appears to be teetering on the brink of a man-made extinction crisis. Scientists have suggested that, unless urgent action is taken now, many species will disappear in the next 50 years. This article looks at some of the issues involved.